News June 13, 2022: Peltarion, Spotify, Droppa, SFW, Yubico, Surfboard Payments, Stockeld Dreamery and more

‌‌Here is today's curation of news from Sweden's startup and tech sector.

Mergers & acquisitions

• Peltarion (Stockholm, AI platform aimed at operationalizing AI technology quickly) was acquired by Activision Blizzard-owned interactive entertainment company King. Financial terms were not disclosed. In 2021, Peltarion was valued at SEK890M (English, Swedish / DI Digital paywall).
• Spotify (Stockholm, audio streaming service) acquired UK-based Sonantic, a startup that has built an AI engine to create very realistic-sounding, yet simulated, human voices from text. Financials were not disclosed (English).

Funding news

• Droppa (Stockholm, creator of a scalable drop-off network to make circular shopping easy): SEK15M (€1.4M, $1.5M) from among others Laulima and Curitas Ventures (Swedish, machine translation).
• SFW - Sustainable Food Waste (Helsingborg, upcoming B2B SaaS solution for temperature monitoring of food): SEK3.4M (€320K, $340K) from Loop Capital and undisclosed angel investors (Swedish, machine translation).

>> Daily updated, subscriber-exclusive Google sheet with all funding rounds raised by private Swedish startups and scaleups. Request access.

News from Swedish startups, the tech sector and VCs

• Yubico, Stockholm- and Palo Alto-based provider of secure login solutions, has reached profitiblity. Booked sales for the first 5 months of 2022 grew by 120% compared to the same period of last year, to SEK800M (€75M, $80M), according to CEO and founder Stina Ehrensvärd (Swedish / DI Digital paywall).
• Surfboard Payments, Stockholm-based payments startup, has been granted a license to fully act as a payment institution, from the Swedish Financial Supervisory Authority (English).
• Stockeld Dreamery, Stockholm-based startup making plant-based cheese, launched a cream "cheese" product (English).
• Sifted published a ranking of 95 "Nordic startups and scaleups to watch in 2022" (English).
• Stockholm-based Zenith Venture Capital announced the first close of a new fund at SEK375M (€35M, $37M), with a target of SEK500M-SEK575M, for investments in startups and scaleups at various stages (Swedish / DI Digital paywall).

Other interesting things from the startup/VC world & beyond

• Estonian VC fund Superangel announced a new €50M fund to invest primarily in deeptech startups from across the Baltics and Nordics. The firm is tokenising up to 5% of its new fund’s carried interest, which will be given to industry experts who work closely with portfolio companies to help them develop strategies and processes (English / Sifted paywall, alternative URL).
• The challenges that come with secondary sales outside of traditional funding rounds (English).

Other interesting things related to Sweden

• Shortage of train drivers in Sweden could lead to major summer delays (English / The Local paywall, alternative URL).
• 📺 2 rubbish bins in Malmö have been equipped by city authorities with loudspeakers, blaring out raunchy phrases like "ooooh, right there yeah" to encourage passers-by to use the bins to get rid of their rubbish (English).

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That's it for today.